16 Timeless Principles That Drive Performance Excellence THE WINNING SPIRIT. (JOE MONTANA, TOM MITCHELL/Random House September 2005/192 Pages/$23.

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1 16 Timeless Principles That Drive Performance Excellence THE WINNING SPIRIT (JOE MONTANA, TOM MITCHELL/Random House September 2005/192 Pages/$23.95)

2 THE WINNING SPIRIT 16 Timeless Principles That Drive Performance Excellence MAIN IDEA The same time-tested principles which underpin success in professional sports also work equally well in the family and business environments. To win consistently, you ve got to develop a winning spirit based on a foundation of preparation, optimism, attention to detail, enduring setbacks, personal responsibility, honesty, loyalty and integrity. The great thing is there is no magic formula when it comes to developing a winning spirit. Instead, you have to work hard, prepare for success on a daily basis and do everything that s required consistently well. It s a regime that can be learned, and once integrated becomes self-perpetuating and contagious. Competitive sports are one of the best preparations for life, reflecting, as they do, the highly competitive nature of the world around us. I never wanted anyone on my team who didn t passionately care about rising above the competition and winning. If winning wasn t important, people wouldn t keep score. Like it or not, we live in a world that keeps score. About of Author JOE MONTANA played professional football in the National Football League (NFL) for sixteen years. He is widely recognized as one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history as he led the San Francisco 49ers to four Super Bowl victories. Mr. Montana is the only player to have won three most valuable player awards in Super Bowls. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Since retiring from professional football, Mr. Montana has become a successful motivational speaker and has co-foundedmvp Performance Institute, a consulting company which helps improve organizational performance. He is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame. TOM MITCHELL is a business coach, motivational speaker and performance consultant. He was formerly a college head basketball coach and currently advises the National Basketball Association and other major corporations. Mr. Mitchell, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh, Sonoma State University and the University for Integrative Learning, is also a co-founder of the MVP Performance Institute. The Web site for this book is at

3 Paradoxically, you achieve more in life by subtracting than you ever do by addition. In other words, the more you can eliminate the distractions and what doesn t work for you individually, the more quality time you have to focus on what you need to do and master to become successful. Clarity helps you concentrate and get more out of the practice time which is available. With this in mind, you should be able to give a very concise answerwhensomeone asks: What do you really want from life? To be able to answer this question honestly will take work, time and effort on your part, but this is vital. If you can t answer that question in fine detail, how will you know what to do or whether you re making sound progress? You won t even be able to feel very confident about what you re doing until you ve taken the time and effort to clarify where you want to be. There is usually a direct link between what you like and what you re pretty good at. If you re not yet sure what you want to go after, looking closely at what you re already good at may provide some worthwhile clues and hints. Once you have this clarified, you can then focus like a laser on your chosen area of specialization. That clarity can unleash a genuinely impressive and powerful driving force. At this stage, repetition becomes you closest ally. You can practice again and again everything that is required to perform in your chosen area of specialization with confidence and skill. We can all conjure up favorite heroes, in sports or elsewhere. They all have something in common, and in abundance. These heroes are doing exactly what they want to be doing. A long time ago, they had clarity about their chosen fields, and with that clarity - 3 -

4 came the desire, focus and energy to practice and excel. Knowing what we want is the beginning of achieving performance excellence. Einstein said that imagination is more important than knowledge. If this is true, let s make the time and spend the energy to engage our imaginations and begin to see what it is we want to do and where we want to go. Let s not allow our limited thinking (or anyone else s, for that matter) to put us in a box or place a ceiling above us. Let s utilize the power of clear thinking, as well as imagination, to help us successfully accomplish our greatest dreams. If you make your work the vehicle by which you pursue your passions, impressive amounts of energy and enthusiasm can be brought to bear. Have the inner desire which underpins the passion to excel. The desire to excel can t be faked. Instead, desire flows naturally from doing something you love. When you put yourself in that position, practice and then performance can be viewed as an opportunity to express yourself rather than an obligation. A career should be built around something you feel passionate about even though it also serves to pay your bills. This is a more attainable goal than most people realize. When you enjoy what you do to earn a living, you ll be motivated to excel. You ll lie awake at night planning what needs to be done the next day in order to get better. You ll be creative and hardworking. You ll want to show just how good you are. All of these benefits are flow-on effects from your deep seated desire to achieve which everyone should have. One reason why this is so important is when you re doing something you love, you ll be prepared to work hard. This should not be underestimated. Even better, the harder you work and the more creative you become, the more fun you will have. This, in turn, leads to better-than-average work habits and loads of other flow-on benefits. A recurring trait with many highly accomplished people is they are having so much fun they just can t imagine doing anything else. They re too busy exploring everything life has to offer. It might be unrealistic to think you ll love every aspect of your job. Even stunningly great jobs will have some aspects which you find tedious or uninspiring. If you stop thinking I have to do this because... and start thinking I want to do this because..., that change of attitude will generate some very positive benefits. When you re doing what you love, it s not about how many points you put on the board one afternoon or how much money you can take to the bank at the end of the week. It s - 4 -

5 about the pursuit itself. Right now, as a businessman, I want to make a great investment on behalf of my clients, but as soon as I do and get a little charge out of it, I want to find the next great investment. Don t they have enough money? I ve heard people say that about tycoons like Donald Trump after news of their latest deal. But that misses the point. Even for guys like Trump, it s not just about the money. They love making the deal itself. They want to be involved in the chase and to stay in the game until they close the deal. And once they do win, lose or draw they move on to the next deal with the same intense desire. It s called playing for the love of the game, and even if they have a few setbacks along the way, they are always successful in the end. We should have a real burn inside if we wish to continually take our game to the next level to achieve excellence because we love what we are doing and because it feels good doing it. Love that burn, and keep loving it. Success in professional athletic competitions always comes down to the person or team who has prepared the most thoroughly. In a similar vein, success in most fields comes to the person who puts in the effort to practice and prepare. If you plan on excelling at whatever you attempt, you d better be prepared to put in lots of time practicing. You just won t be able to get ahead of the competition any other way. Quite simply practice time is an opportunity to improve the way you play your game whatever that game may be. It might mean giving a critical presentation in front of a mirror or into a video recorder until you can nail it. Or it might mean sitting down and thinking through how you ll answer the toughest questions any critics may ask. Or it might mean an array of other things specific to your industry and company. The point is in practice, you learn something new all the time, which is what you want. The way we practice, and the work ethic that we bring to that preparation, may not be obvious right away, but eventually it will show

6 Becoming excellent is a learned skill. It does not come naturally for anyone, despite what you might think. Everyone who is excellent at what they do gets to be that way through a huge, concentrated effort to improve. This will embrace both physical effort as well as intense mental effort. People attract whatever they focus on most of the time. If you concentrate on and think about excellence and success most of the time, eventually that s what you ll find. The world is filled with possibilities and opportunities to do great things. It s the ongoing pursuit of perfection that s important, not how far short of the ideal you ultimately end up. The key to performance excellence is to be prepared for the unexpected so you can make the needed adjustments on the fly and still close the deal. That also requires taking on board the feedback you get, even if you don t like what you re hearing. This is the only way you can be open to improvement. You re the only person who can make the decision to strive for excellence in your own field. Wealth and heritage can mean very little in this regard. There are loads of examples of people who have everything handed to them on a plate because of their family connections who lack the inner fire to strive for excellence. Then there are those whohave overcome tremendous obstacles no money, lack of parental support, poor education, for example to achieve impressively. They have used the overcoming of their obstacles to fuel their competitive spirit rather than as reasons to fail. To strive for excellence doesn t mean you have to give up on having fun along the way.many superstars get their starts in their formative years doing fun things with their parents. Others find offbeat or even quirky ways to work some fun into their work activities. For example, one business executive realized he loved all forms of competition intensely so he developed his own routine for Sundays. Each Sunday morning, he would put his wife and baby on a city bus and then take off running as fast as he could. The idea was to try and get to where his wife would get off the bus on the other side of town before the bus could snake through the city traffic and get there. After this run, he would then walk his wife home and drop by the office to get his weekly numbers. He then started focusing on the coming week and what his key goals would be. That simple weekly routine worked well for him and helped him to stay motivated and focused, while at the same time injecting a little fun into the proceedings. Although we may not want to be as extreme as the bus-racing salesman, each of us should look at life and find at least one area where we really want to push ourselves to be the very best as a parent, a student, an employee, an athlete where we can strive for excellence and discover just how good at something we can become

7 I have never liked losing. In fact, I have hated it for as long as I can remember. Winning only a certain amount of the time has never worked for me. In business, if you don t make your quota for the month, you may not make your quota for the year. That could mean you don t get your bonus, and you may fall from being the top salesman to number two, which for me has always been first place for the first loser. I d rather be the first winner. I coached an executive for more than a decade and have seen him in different positions as he worked his way up to CEO. From the beginning, I could see that he set out to excel in every one of his jobs. It s easy to say, I want to be the best, but to walk the talk, lots of little things come into play. I studied his behavior learned how he got up in the morning with self-administered pep talks, how he communicated with his employees by asking questions and listening well, how he delegated not by simply issuing orders but by giving employees a real say in something they knew about. I watched him empower his employees and thereby have them feel ownership and responsibility in their jobs. He clearly expected excellence of himself and others as well. He knew how to defuse tension and unnecessary pressure in those around him by acknowledging their victories, no matter how large or small. He successfully managed not only from the top down but from the bottom up by including trusted employees in major decisions. The most valuable lesson I gained from him was to watch him call forth an inner power a driving, steadfast will for achieving excellence. I watched him command maximum effort from himself, which would naturally cascade down to others in his orbit. He would constantly say, Create your own success today. Don t wait for it to come to you. My true belief is that the winning spirit exists in everyone. Otherwise, we will have designed a program for only elite human beings born with special gifts, meaning the rest of us are just ordinary folks with no chance of finding our own greatness. I don t buy that, and neither does Joe. Prepar ation 3 Practice with a purpose Confidence is important in business. If you don t have confidence you can put together a great deal or make things happen, you won t even try. In effect, you get defeated before you even step into the game or take a swing at whatever gets pitched at you. There are several things you can do to enhance your own levels of self-confidence and self-esteem: Increase your physical energy levels by taking better care of your body. This will include eating more nutritious meals and less junk food, getting regular exercise, making certain you sleep enough and taking the time to meditate or work on your - 7 -

8 spiritual and emotional health. Break old habits and develop new habits which are more positive. You might eliminate negative thinking, for example, and form a new routine in which you give yourself regular internal pep talks. Stop blaming other people for what s happening in your life and take full control over what you do, say and think. Acknowledge your hidden fears and expose them to the light of day. With a bit of luck, this might help you realize your fears were groundless and served only to prevent you from achieving everything you re capable of. Practice acting confidently and before you realize it you ll genuinely feel that way. Note self-confidence does not mean having an oversized ego or being arrogant. Mistakes will happen and things will go wrong, even when you ve done the best you can. A person with healthy doses of confidence will take those problems in stride and get going again whereassomeone with arrogance won t even try. It s important to get this balance just right. Any one of us can have our confidence shaken by a series of mistakes or defeats, but no one can take it away from us. Confidence is completely ours to give to ourselves, and ours to take away when we feel low. If we ve lost it, we simply have to find it again.wemust fall back on the fundamentals, those things we have developed confidence in doing well. Once we get going again, we can start to take more chances, as long as we stay within our capabilities. Those fundamentals will drive us. True confidence in onself is specific. I can believe in myself, but that doesn t mean I have the confidence to be a professional musician or a world-champion boxer or an Olympic tennis player or anything else for which I have little or average talent or training. Belief is about being something; confidence is about doing something. When we understand our unique gifts, evaluate our skills and our talents, and identify our strengths, we have confidence. We know the things we do well. Confidence is not magical. It is factual and a lot about repetition, focus, hard work and desire. Confidence is accomplished through the practice and execution of things we do well. At some point in our development, each of us must assume the responsibility of producing a well of inner confidence on which to draw. The best way to look at failure is to remind yourself you ve discovered another way that does not work so you can spend more time on things that will work. Failures are nothing more or less than opportunities to grow and learn. Successful people always look at - 8 -

9 failures as temporary setbacks and keep on working at what needs to be done. They don t take failure personally, and neither should you. What s good about failure? Failure often acts as a catalyst for change and innovation it forces you to stop what you re doing now, reframe your expectations, reevaluate your skills and set a better strategy for moving forward. Failure shows you re trying to step outside your comfort zone and do something different which is good. Failure is a badge of honor in many different ways it means you ve tried something original and found out for yourself whether or not it works. Failure is temporary it helps you learn what you ve got to do better next time around to break through and win. If you fail fast, you can learn what doesn t work quickly before you commit major resources to it. You re far better off having a small setback and learning from it than you ever will be losing a major proportion of your resources. Failure forces you to evaluate your performance honestly it doesn t allow you to fudge your results and make unnecessary allowance. Failure forces you to be brutally honest and factual in your analysis. Being human, nobody likes to fail but in its purest form, failure is essential for achieving excellence. How you handle all the unexpected setbacks which will crop up in your personal life and business career will speak volumes about your personal fortitude and mind-set. If you use failure as a spur to train harder and increase your capabilities, failure will serve you well. And conversely, if you become consumed by worrying about past failures, your future performances will suffer accordingly. It may sound strange but many champions are made champions by setbacks. Bob Richards, two-time Olympic pole vault champion I can accept failure. Everyone fails at something. But I can t accept not trying. Michael Jordan, NBA basketball player There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure. Colin Powell, former U.S. Secretary of State Since we all fail, we might as well learn how to fail well. Successful people not only fail regularly, they are masters at handling it. Failure is failure only when we let it negatively impact on our future performance, or allow it to keep us from attempting new activities. A winning person does neither, only learning from it

10 The dynamics of teams are very interesting. Great teams generate synergy in that they can accomplish more than any individual could ever achieve on their own. It all comes down to the attitude of the people who make up the team. A great attitude on the part of each team member will generate lots of forward momentum. Some people find it helpful to work on their personal attitudes by using self-affirmations. For example, you might say to yourself each morning: Today is going to be a great day. I feel great and ready to do something great at work today. I m going to make a great contribution today. In a team setting, enthusiasm is highly contagious. If just one person can feel genuinely positive and committed, before long everyone feels the same way. That positive energy can feed on itself and generate loads of go-forward momentum. There is nothing finer and more inspiring than working on a team filled with people who have a can-do attitude and approach to life. Sometimes all it takes is one little spark to start a whole virtuous cycle going. Make a commitment that you ll become the kind of person other people want to have on their teams. Take the time to ponder your answers to some very probing questions: What kind of attitude do you project to the other people on your team, and how can you upgrade your attitude? Are you known and recognized for your courage and enthusiasm and if not, what are you going to do about that? Do you want to be seen as an honest and committed leader or something else?

11 Nobody possess all the qualities of a positive attitude. None of us is perfect. We all have areas to work on. But we do have the choice of how much or how little we want to influence others in our sphere a smile, a compliment to someone who needs it, an expression of optimism. All of these thoughts and actions go out into the world and come back to us in kind, many times over. To trigger an attitude change, call a temporary time-out. Move your physical body to another location, or engage your mind with a different focus, such as reading a book, listening to uplifting music, or exercising. If you re called on to act as the leader of a team, understand this is a very unique and influential position to be placed in. Leadership requires trust, honesty, communication and service. You have to find ways to show each and every team member their contribution is noted and valued. The only genuine way you can exhibit these traits is by setting the right personal example. Leadership by example is far more influential than leadership by fear, intimidation or coercion. It s even better than leadership by strength of position or appointment. Leading by example is inspired leadership because everyone can see you re genuinely committed at a personal level first and foremost. To become better at leading by example: Welcome feedback whether it comes from up or down the organizational ladder. Make it as easy as possible for people to give feedback openly and then follow through and do something about the suggestions made. Great leaders realize they don t know everything themselves. Pose some probing questions to your team members on a regular basis and then listen carefully to the answers given. Share the credit for anything the team accomplishes widely and generously. Be prepared to take the blame for whatever goes wrong and be gracious about criticism, even if it does not seem fair. Think long and hard about what you can do to inspire others to mobilize them to apply their best efforts towards achieving the team s objectives. Exhibit optimism and confidence so you can inspire others to use their time, skills and talents to best effect. Make it your priority to help all the team members achieve their personal goals and make this your obsession. To do this effectively, you ll have to know what your people

12 are capable of individually. Take the time to learn what motivates and inspires each member of your team. Leaders are not born. Leaders are made, and they are made by effort and hard work. Vince Lombardi, coach, Green Bay Packers Professional athletes get used to having their performances reviewed regularly by the media, their team management, their coaches and by their own teammates. The same applies to the performing arts and in business. Since this is happening all the time anyway, it makes good sense to supplement this with a few thorough self evaluations as well. This is a good way to get a realistic understanding of yourownstrengths and weaknesses. Even in a team setting, individual preparation and effort is vital. The success of a team is dependant on how well each individual prepares. It s only when each individual has paid the price to prepare thoroughly and to acquire the skills which will be required that the team can win. To put this in practical terms, on great teams the individuals involved ask themselves consistently: What can I be doing to become better? What basic skills do I lack that I need to gain? What else can I be doing to realize my true potential? Only when individuals are ready to play can the team win. Personal accountability is the foundation of the winning spirit. Remembering the I in Team is not a selfish act. It is bigger than any of us alone; it s about us as individual members of a team. It s not me being self-centered and worried about my statistics; it is I as an individual centered in a place of personal responsibility, prepared to make that next level of commitment to the team

13 Trust starts when someone promises to do something and then follows through and delivers. When this happens time after time, a team will bond together and have confidence the right things are going to happen at the right time. Consideration enriches relationships. It shows you value the other people on your team. To be considerate means you have the ability to put yourself in their shoes and see things from their perspective. Consideration also means to act kindly towards those who you don t yet know all that well. When people on a team are considerate of each other, morale increases which invariably ends up boosting performance as well. Both trust and consideration are reciprocal character traits. Trust inspires more trust. Showingconsideration encourages others to do the same. When we feel others trust us, we re more likely to be open and candid about our concerns, our mistakes and our own problems. We also find it easy to forgive the occasional lapses in judgement because we appreciate and understand the long-term future of the relationship. This dynamic is great because it creates an environment where a very powerful team spirit can evolve and grow. For someone to earn our trust, he or she should demonstrate a commitment to suiting up day after day without fail at practice, in meetings, doing their mental and physical preparation and showing up with energy and enthusiasm at crunch time. On the playing field or in a business setting, trust builds through consistency of attendance, performance and attitude. How do you find the winning spirit? There is no magic formula. It s about hard work, and it begins with the way each of us prepares for success on a daily basis. Performing well under pressure is a skill professional athletes learn. This is also a highly desirable quality in business, because it increases your value to your team or your organization. To become better at working under pressure: Concentrate on the task at hand and avoid reacting to all the tension and emotion which exists separately. Focus on what you need to do so intensively everything else just recedes naturally into the background. Concentrate on applying your basic and fundamental skills to the best of your capacities. Relax for a moment when it s possible to do so by stepping back mentally and

14 thinking about something you love doing. That way you can come back to the demands of the situation at hand afresh. Control your thinking and visualize being successful rather than choking at the last minute. Have productive thoughts and feel confident you will be able to perform with confidence. Don t think about the bad things that might happen, but instead think about the good things you re going to cause to happen. Go back to the basics and execute what you know inside and out. Feel confident you re around the best people available and draw some self-belief from their capacities and talents. Keep reminding yourself there s always enough time if you re smart and therefore you should focus on executing well what you re attempting to get done right this minute. Since pressure and tension are unavoidable in a big, well-lived life, why not welcome them? Instead of struggling against it, we should embrace the pressure we feel and let it help us be even better. We should thrive on the energy it gives us. When we find ourselves in an intense pressure situation, we want to believe we can win and say, I love the pressure. Bring it on! At some point in my career, I came to welcome pressure situations, because I knew they would test me and my team to see what we were made of, and I felt we were up to the challenge. These are opportunities to develop more confidence, trust, and mental toughness. Plus, it s a lot more fun to win a close one against a worthy opponent than to trounce a mediocre team. We all love having individuals on our team who thrive on pressure. So many things in sports and business come down to the wire the pressure of a deadline, bettering the competition that having someone on your team who has learned how to use pressure to his or her advantage is a real plus. Competition forces us into the spotlight, often alone, even when a member of a team. If we strive for performance excellence, we must perform regularly under all sorts of pressure

15 As helpful as it is to visualize future successes and recall positive memories, your results will be more dependent on what you do right now. Focus your attention on the job at hand. This will generate what is effectively a field of energy which will translate into power. By concentrating on immediate tasks, you will project calmness, poise and confidence which others will find useful and alluring. This doesn t mean you should be constantly under stress. Rather, you want to be in an aware yet relaxed state of mind. You want to become immersed in the here and now so you can bring to bear all your mental, physical and emotional energies. In fact the more you can relax in a pressure situation, the greater the chances become you ll achieving something noteworthy. If you re doing something you re passionate about, your mind won t wander much anyway. You ll be having too much fun. You ll want to go for it and do the best you can. Rookies are excellent examples of this principle. They re completely open-minded and passionate about learning what s needed to excel. It isn t until they start thinking of their sport as a business that they lose their natural enthusiasm and exuberance. To perform in the moment means to leave aside thoughts of past failures, financial pressures, deadlines and other personal distractions. Many professional athletes have a system for doing this. Businesspeople should do the same. Some suggestions: Learn how to control your breathing and focus on doing that in a pressure situation. As you breath in and breath out, clear your mind of every other thought and focus on the present moment. Enjoy what you re doing for what it is and what it offers you

16 When you get home from work at night, spend the first 15-minutes actively listening to what your spouse and children want to tell you about their day. Allocate a specific block of time each day to doing something you love passionately and that one thing only. Don t teach and coach too much about where you want to be. Coach and teach about where you are as a team right now, and what you want to do right now in order to play your best. John Wooden, coach of the UCLA college basketball team which won ten national basketball championships Successful visualization has three different aspects: 1. Concentration on something specific and attainable, not a vague generality. 2. Imagination where you clearly and vividly see in your mind the event or outcome you re working towards. You create mentally what you then go to work to duplicate physically. 3. Repetition where you burn your future image of success deep into your mind. The great thing about visualization is you can do it any time any where. For example, a world-class marathon runner was in the habit of visualizing a powerful magnet pulling him to the top whenever he came to a hill on a marathon course. Motivational speakers often visualize their audience as being wildly excited and applauding enthusiastically at the end of their presentation. They then go out and work to make that happen. Visualizing works because it accelerates your ability to achieve results. When you visualize a successful business outcome, you engage aspects of your brain that otherwise are not applied. Visualization creates patterns that allow you to accomplish what you re after. In effect, visualization create a bridge from where you are now to where you want to be in the future. You can enhance the effectiveness of your visualization routine by developing a short, simple statement of your intent. This becomes an affirmation you can then repeat again and again. If you write your affirmation down and place it where you ll see it regularly, this will remind you to keep visualizing successful outcomes. Free your mind and your body will follow

17 High achievers know how to ask for help. They put together a support team or inner circle of people they trust in advance. This brains trust then acts as a source of valued feedback and ideas on how to improve in the future. A coach also accelerates the rate of improvement and growth. Business coaches can help with career transitions, teach goal setting and personal motivation techniques, help people learn how to deal with mistakes or handle criticism, boost communication skills and a limitless number of other things. Coaches can be an invaluable resource for people looking to advance their careers. The best thing about a coach or an inner circle of advisers is they are one step removed from the demands of the current moment. They can provide a sense of perspective you might struggle to have on your own. A coach who is professional will also provide unbiased and nonjudgemental feedback. In effect, he or she will function as a sounding board you can trust and respect. Pure and simple a coach helps you get better, so it s important that you pick a coach wisely. Your inner circle should be people who look out for your best interests. They should be people who you feel comfortable confiding in and who you trust to give you the unvarnished truth whenever you need to hear it. You also want people you can trust in a crisis to be there for you. If you can put together a circle of people like that, you ll be amazed at how much they contribute to your long-term success. Capturing the winning spirit is not a solo enterprise. A coach is someone who sees what we cannot always see in our own lives. He collaborates with us, challenges us, and tells us the truth as he sees it. An extraordinary coach helps us clarify our values and to design a life honoring them. A coach assists us in crystallizing our thoughts by asking probing and thought-provoking questions. A coach sometimes expects more from us than we expect of ourselves, and can often shift us out of our comfort zone

18 High achievers call their own shots. They decide what they want to stand for and then throw everything behind an attempt to execute the plan of action required. If you aspire to achieve great things in your own career, decide what you want to stand for and then work hard to achieve your goals. The victories you savor the most intensely will be those which match your own personal goals in fine detail. As you build a solid record of accomplishment, you reach the stage where you become your own hero and a true winner. That s something no one else can ever take away from you. Life s great victories don t always go to the smartest or the strongest. More often, they accrue to those who think they can achieve something noteworthy and who back that self confidence with action and passion. When you meet someone who is well on their way to achieving something noteworthy, they have a presence, an inner belief that is almost tangible. Winners, I amconvinced, imagine their dream first. They want it with all their heart and expect it to come true. There is, I believe, no other way to live. Champions aren t made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: a dream, a desire, a vision. They have to have late-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill. Muhammad Ali, former heavyweight boxing champion Walk like a champ. This statement is not symbolic or hopeful. To walk like a champion, you must think like a champion. You must feel like a champion. You must search, dig, fight, explore, ask succeed, and fail, until you know beyond a doubt the winning spirit lives inside you. Take that walk. Even in the highly competitive environment of business, there is still so much to be grateful for. You should appreciate everything you have including your health, the presence in your life of those you love and even the opportunity you have to rise above the crowd and stand out. These are all the kinds of things it s easy to take for granted and that you don t even notice until they are no longer there. Be thankful for all you have. When you honestly appreciate what others do for you and take the time to thank them, you ll find you live in the present moment more intensively. You ll also become a better person to be around, which surely can t be a bad thing. Other people will sign on to help you achieve your goals because they will feel like their input is noted and reciprocated. An attitude of appreciation leads to a heightened sense of engagement in the here and

19 now. Appreciation for the talents and efforts of others also helps you understand better the challenges, limitations and obstacles you face. When you share the credit for anything you achieve, it makes you become more realistic and approachable. Others will step forward to do all they can to help because they believe you will value their input fairly and appropriately. Whether it s family, friends or colleagues,we should never fail to let the most important people in our lives know how much we appreciate them, and how much credit we share with them for whatever success we ve attained. Appreciation should start at home and follow us throughout the day. When we integrate a spirit of gratitude into our daily lives, and honestly appreciate other people by acknowledging and thanking them, an experience of prosperity and abundance rapidly grows within us.weunderstand the more thankful we are for what we have, and the more appreciation we give, the more we receive back. As we explore the practice of appreciation, we not only acknowledge the gifts, talents, accomplishments, and other good fortune which has come our way; we also learn to appreciate the challenges, limitations and obstacleswe face.we let them motivate us to overcome our weaknesses and achieve even more in life. Developing an attitude of gratitude is key to a happy and successful life. * * * [세계 베스트셀러(NBS) 서비스는 영문의 경제 경영 및 정치 서적의 베스트셀러, 스테디셀러의 핵심 내용을 간략하게 정리한 요약(Summary) 서비스입니다. 영문 서비스는 단순히 서적을 소개하거나 광고를 위한 Book Review가 아니라 세계의 베스 트셀러 도서의 핵심을 체계적으로 정리한 도서 정보로써, 이 서비스를 통해 세계의 정치 경제 문화의 흐름을 빠르게 파악할 수 있습니다. 세계 지도층이 읽는 세계 베스트셀러 도서를 가장 빠르고 효율적으로 접해보시기 바랍니다.]